Having put in a hard day’s work, they made early preparations for turning in, and by eight o’clock Purdick, who had the first watch, was sitting at his post and listening to the deep breathing of his two companions who were already asleep. It was not until some little time after he had settled himself to his watch that he missed the gurgling murmur of the imprisoned torrent, which they had been hearing off and on all day; and when he did miss it, it suddenly occurred to him that they had all been too tired to remember to lead the burros back into the cave for their evening watering.
Keeping this in mind to the end of his watch, he spoke of it when he roused Dick at midnight. Dick offered to take the burros back, but Purdick said no; that it was as much his oversight as anybody’s, and he would do it. He was back again in a very short time, and, as once before, he brought news.
“I don’t know what’s happened,” he said to Dick, speaking softly so as not to disturb Larry, “but the creek’s gone dry—dry as a bone. Nothing left but a few pools in the hollows, and the jacks drank them dry.”
“That’s queer,” said Dick. “What do you suppose made it do that?”
“I can’t begin to imagine. The only thing I could think of was that maybe the rain flood had made the creek find another underground channel somewhere.”
“That’s bad,” Dick commented. “Without water we can’t last any time at all. But we can’t do anything about it until morning. You turn in and get your snooze.”
For a sentry seat at the cave mouth they had placed a flat rock, and, padding the seat with his blankets, Dick settled himself for his watch, with his feet tucked up under him and his rifle lying across his lap. It was some little time after Purdick’s regular breathing was threatening to develop into a snore that Dick heard a curious sound like the ticking of a clock. At first he thought it was an insect, the bug commonly known as the “death watch.” Yet it didn’t seem just like that, either. “Sounds more like water dripping from a leaky faucet,” he muttered to himself; and just then the two sleepers lying a few feet away on their sand bed began to stir uneasily, and Larry sat up to say, “Here—what’s the matter? This sand’s all wet!”
The startled exclamation woke Purdick and he began to struggle out of his blanket. “Pity’s sake!” he grumbled. “Is it raining away back in this far?” And then explosively: “Say, fellows—Dick! Larry! the water’s an inch deep all over this place!”
Dick, the only one of the three who was fully awake and alert, was the first to take the real alarm.